UK to invest £29.3 million on new labs for vaccine research on COVID-19 variants

UK will spend an estimated £29.3 million ($40.6 million, 33.8 million euros) in funding to set up more labs for COVID-19 testing and ramping up the manufacturing of the vaccines as the country fears that the third wave of the new coronavirus variants might hit. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration plans to set up the "state of the art" laboratories at the Porton Down military research facility for the production of the jabs against the variants of concern, said the UK’s Health Department in an emailed statement accessed by the British press. At the facilities, the scientists will test more than 3,000 blood samples a week to estimate the antibodies generated by the vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 variants to determine its efficacy. 

The laboratories set up plan comes as the UK prepares to lift nearly all COVID-19 restrictions by  June 21. Recently, the country witnessed a dip in the rate of fatality and the confirmed cases, the scientists however warned about the potential resurgence of the virus as public premises reopen. The British government announced last year that it will open at least two new laboratories in early 2021 which will more than double the testing capacity of the COVID-19 to effectively isolate cases before an event of an outbreak. The Boris Johnson government said at a presser that it will make the labs operational one near Leamington Spa in the central English city of Birmingham, and the other in Scotland with a testing capacity of approximately 600,000 per day. 

"We didn't go into this crisis with a significant diagnostics industry, but we have built one, and these two mega labs are another step forward," Britain's health minister, Matt Hancock, said at a COVID-19 news conference. 

Multi-million pound investment 

The UK now plans to open more labs, one in the Porton Down research facility in southwest England which will be variant dedicated, according to Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s statement. “It is a critical way we will build back better to protect the country over the coming months and years,” he said, adding that the investment of this multi-million pound will enable the government to further future-proof the country from the threat of new variants. UK’s Porton Town also has a secretive underground army base near Salisbury in southwest England, that identified the nerve agent Novichok used to poison a Russian spy in the English cathedral city of Salisbury. Britain’s military intelligence in this base had also investigated the G.R.U. involvement in the use of the nerve agents that had heightened tensions between Moscow and the West, according to several reports.